The House of Representatives is braced to vote for the long overdue bill that will regulate the 2019 legislative and presidential elections, as political factions at the House of Representatives struggle to secure a consensus.

A House special committee in charge of deliberating the bill proposed the vote as the final option to resolve weeks of deadlock caused by prolonged differences over the threshold requirement for political parties or coalitions of political parties to nominate a presidential candidate.

Ongoing deadlock on the matter has prevented factions from agreeing on other crucial issues for securing seats in the House. These include the election system – whether it should stay as an open-list or be changed to a closed-system, the legislative threshold, the number of seats in each electoral district and the method of converting votes to seats.

Deputy chairman of the deliberation team, Ahmad Riza Patria, included the voting mechanism in the list of options to end the prolonged discussion, should the team be unable to achieve an agreement by July 10.

“We will present it to a plenary meeting slated for July 20,” he told a meeting on Monday.

Other leaders of the team also expressed confidence in passing the bill into law by the end of next month.

“We will conclude the discussion by the end of this current [House] sitting session on July 29,” team leader Lukman Edy of the National Awakening Party (PKB) said.

Source:
courtesy of THE JAKARTA POST

by Margareth S. Aritonang

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